Back to China in 2010

Back Again!

Here we are again. Barely a year ago we were leaving from HK, and we just arrived this evening on flights nearly double the price (June rather more pricey than September but still cheaper than July). The kids were ok on the flight and slept a good deal of the way - much nicer than when a few months old. I even managed a couple of hours and Waipo didn't have her usual travel sickness (maybe because she vomited most of whatever she had in the taxi to the airport). Although I'd checked online that the last ferry to Shenzhen airport was 9.30pm, it appeared that it was in fact at 7.50pm. Lucky then that we arrived nearly an hour early, and very convenient that we didn't actually disembark in HK, rather we just gave the luggage details to the boat company and they arranged for our suitcases to be put on board the ferry.

It was good that the airport had wifi so I was able to send a few emails to family to say we'd arrived so far so safely, then we took the hour-long ferry journey to mainland China. So nice and easy compared to normal entry into China. Thankfully our luggage was all there so no waiting around a carousel, just pick it up from a storage unit once we'd arrived. Then no more than five minutes getting through immigration. At customs I started putting our suitcases through the x-ray scanner but I was told not to bother and before we knew it we were waiting for the free shuttle bus to the airport. It was a bit of a long-winded way to get to the hotel as there was another free shuttle bus for that, but at least it was waiting at the airport. So we were in our rooms by around 10pm, but Tan was hungry and the hotel had stopped serving food. Never a problem in China. We walked out and found a place within 50 yards, where the kids were admired by all the patrons despite their non-perfect behaviour.
Back in the hotel I got Leilei to sleep in our "men's" room, while the ladies got showered etc in theirs. Didn't manage to sleep till 1.30am.